Modern Magick

Alchemy and Argent: 12

I exchanged looks with both my colleagues, still too busy processing whatever my thoughts might be to say much.

'Well,' said Val after a while.

'Mm,' said I. 'Why was she here?'

'I sent a request for info,' said Val. 'To her secretary. I didn't particularly expect an answer.'

But Crystobel Elvyng herself had responded, with an in-person visit. Prompted by what? Graciousness? Respect for the Society's work?

Could be anything.

'What did you think, House?' I said.

I waited, but no real response came. If House had formed an opinion either of Crystobel herself, or of anything she had said, it wasn't sharing.

'I have one question,' said Jay. 'Why was she calling it argent? Where did that name come from?'

I nodded. 'Curious to hear a brand-new name for the stuff, from someone who claims to have no special information about it.'

'To be fair, she didn't say that she had no special knowledge,' said Val. 'Only that Cicily's work was a dead end.'

'Truth or lie?'

Val shrugged. 'I don't know.'

A gut feeling socked me in the innards. Truth.

Oof.

'House thinks she was speaking the truth,' I said, though I did not need to. Judging from the looks on Val's and Jay's faces, they'd both felt the same thing I had.

'Thanks, House,' said Jay weakly.

The door creaked.

'So it's a dead end?' I said, frustration rising. Curse it, weeks of research followed by days of gadding about and it was all a wild goose chase?

'Maybe,' said Val slowly. 'Maybe not.' She sat tapping the end of a pen against her pursed lips, eyes faraway.

I knew better than to interrupt when Val was thinking.

'Chair,' she said at last, quite politely.

Her new, spring-green chair obediently extracted itself from behind her desk and sailed over. She transferred into it and floated slowly away, heading for the nearest wall-to-wall bank of shelves. Not to retrieve any books, it seemed, but merely to stare at them. Some people derive comfort and clarity from long walks in the fresh air, or a stiff drink, or a cake (guilty). Val gets those things from being near her books. I watched as she stretched out one hand, and ran her fingertips gently over the spines of several precious, beautiful old tomes. 'Argent,' she said.

'Argentein,' I said.

'Moonsilver and moon-bathing,' added Jay.

Val's chair spun around so fast I feared she might fall out. 'Yes,' she said. 'There are patterns. Links. The moon, and argent. The Yllanfalen. The Werewodes. Werewode, not Elvyng.'

'Maybe Cicily's marriage is incidental,' I agreed. 'Hell, maybe her Yllanfalen father is irrelevant, moonsilver notwithstanding. Maybe this has been a Werewode party all along.'

Val looked hard at me. 'But then, where are Cicily's writings? Or Mary's? Why has so little of either of their work survived?'

'Thought,' said Jay, a touch diffidently.

'You don't need permission to speak, Jay,' I told him. 'This isn't school.'

He merely flickered a brow at that. I hoped the fleeting expression didn't mean he thought I was an idiot for pointing it out. 'Crystobel said that the Elvyngs have little that belonged to Cicily, right?'